It’s hard to argue that food delivery services such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo aren’t popular or changing the way we eat – now the convenient food trend is shedding light on the urgency required to rethink city planning.
“We’ve moved on from just having the pizza delivery car,” says UNSW City Future Research Centre’s professor Christopher Pettit.
“… [but] government are still grappling with how to deal with these ‘new’ delivery services and seems to be way behind in being able to come up with solutions.”
The urban science professor says that cycling infrastructure in particular, is lagging behind the rise of app-based food delivery services and “struggling to keep pace with the change”.
“There hasn’t been a significant increase in cycle infrastructure, but we have seen a substantial increase in these delivery services over the past five years,” continues professor Pettit.
“At the same time, you’ve also got the democratisation of cycle-based deliveries with the rise of electric bikes [like scooters], so now anyone can cycle through the undulations of the city.”
Lack of dedicated cycleways
Professor Pettit says that the confusion can come from whether existing roads fall within state or local government jurisdiction, however it’s no excuse.
“There is a rise of these bikes on the footpath, even though it’s illegal,” he says. “We’ve got very narrow footpaths in a lot of areas, which is bringing about some of the conflict with pedestrians, and it’s putting these riders in a very precarious position.”
“We’d love to be able to get the data from some of these companies and understand what those pinch points are,” he says. “If we could get this data, we could be looking [at] where those hotspots and overlaying where incidents are occurring.”
Professor Pettit says the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the demand for app-based delivery services, and the demand won’t be going away anytime soon.
